I’m not up to date on US law*, but writing a fictional story which features someone who’s underage is not illegal. The law is there to protect actual minors, not to protect sensitive readers.
It does raise an interesting moral/legal question, perhaps better suited for GD: A pedophile jacking off to a porn pic of a modell who is over 18, but looks and poses as a 12 y.o. is perfectly legal. Owning a copy of Penthouse with Traci Lords (who was 15 at the time, but certainly looks as if she is over 18) is illegal. As I said, the law is there to protect the minor, but from a moral standpoint, I can’t help but think that some pedophile would be more interested in the former type than in the latter - thus he can legally feed his habit.
*These things are more or less international law nowadays.
At the risk of being wooshed, I thought we’d already established that it isn’t kiddie porn of *any * kind, let alone “simple”. And the hospital bill stuff was quoted in the OP, it’s just part of the sell.
It’s a - -highly questionable - story of a child’s rape. As a story, it’s porn involving a child.
Given the story’s questionable veracity, the bit about hospital bills puts it in the realm of “scam”. The “seller” is going after those who are interested in the story and those who are interested in paying some hospital bills that probably don’t even exist.
My guess is someone decided to try out one of those “email tracking” spams as an auction.
Agreed. It isn’t child pornography and the story isn’t illegal in itself, but given that they are probably lying about the ultimate destination of the funds, it’s likely fraud.
I don’t know if it’s really fraud, either, at least no more so than all those convoluted stories on eBay about how they’re selling ghost-infested clocks/the soon-to-be-ex’s stuff/cursed leather boots/etc. Why would a story about using the proceeds to pay medical bills be treated much different by them?
I see now what you’re saying about how it could be considered fraudulent, so I won’t argue with that. I guess I just assumed people would realize it was a “fantasy package” of sorts.
Maybe I overestimate people though.
With the cursed & haunted stuff, the buyer already knows what they’re getting into. They’ll probably start noticing weird things happening in their lives and attribute it to whatever they bought. Ex’s stuff? As long as it’s not stolen, no real problem there.
Asking people to pay for non-existant medical bills is long-standing scam, one that’s probably been around since the day after medical bills were created. This one just happens to be associated with an auction.
But it is not that which is defined as the crime of “Child Pornography” under US Law. It has a very specific definition and people will make a point of doing the legalistic hairsplitting, because of the grave potential legal consequences.
Yet, prosecutors have hung parents out to dry for having pictures of their precious baby, naked in the bath tub, so who knows just what the prosecutor would do? Especially since it seems the target customer base of that “story” were people who’d get a thrill from pretending that a six year old child was raped.
Just because a few stray District Attorneys go overboard doesn’t mean they succeed.
The rationale behind the government being able to ban child pornography is because it harms actual children, not because the people who want to watch it have icky thoughts. Jesus Christ, we want to arrest people for thought crimes now?
However zealous he be, a prosecutor could ‘do’ nothing at all with the story alone*. The simple fact is that, as has been stated above, it is not against the law to write or read such stuff, however abhorrent we may think it. The internet is full of stories that make the skin crawl. Sure, they are the product of diseased imaginations but however sick they might be, the stories are protected by the First Amendment.
Although he could probably use the possession of such writings, if you were up on related charges, to show the jury what a lowlife you were.